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Outlaw Tech
Reference Book: Star Wars Saga Edition Scum and Villainy See also: SaV Outlaw Tech, Weapon and Armor Accessories Whether you need to find someone, keep yourself hidden, cheat at Games of Chance, or be ready with a surprise in a fight, you can make the difference with Equipment not found in the bright stores of the Core Worlds. Even if you prefer to keep yourself on the right side of the law, you might want to enhance that simple Heavy Blaster Pistol with a few legal, if expensive, add-ons. This section is about making sure you have the right tools for your jobs, even if you have to ignore a few rules to get them. Equipment Upgrade Slots No self-respecting bounty hunter uses off-the-rack components, and after a few years in the field neither do most commandos. Anyone with extensive experience, from smugglers to customs agents to adventurers, knows they might live or die by how well their gear works. Often, it's not that you need a brand new piece of gear; you just need the Equipment you have to work better. That's where Equipment Upgrades come in; they provide ways for you to get the most out of every kilogram you carry. Even if you don't strictly need to upgrade your Equipment, having a unique collection of tools and gadgets helps to build a reputation in a galaxy where it's best to get your foes to stand down without firing a shot. Upgrade Slots You can make a finite number of modifications to a piece of Equipment. There isn't room to add every booster, reinforcement, and modification a fringer might find useful on any piece of Equipment. To represent these limits, every item has a number of Upgrade Slots. Most Upgrades take up a single slot, though a few particularly extensive modifications might take two or even three (And a few don't require any Upgrade Slots, representing relatively minor modifications). If you don't have enough slots for a given modification, you can't add it to that piece of Equipment. You can't add modifications beyond an item's available Upgrade Slots, but you can gain more Upgrade Slots (See below). Every stock piece of Equipment has a single unused Upgrade Slot. Unlike most armor, Powered Armor has two free Upgrade Slots. Armor is defined as Powered Armor if it is specifically described as such, or the word power (Or some variant thereof) appears in the armor's name. A few other models of items have also include more Upgrade Slots as stock issue, though this is rare and specifically noted. Gaining Upgrade Slots You can gain more Upgrade Slots for a piece of Equipment by one of two methods. You can Strip it- removing some existing feature, as detailed below- or you can increase its size. Unless a method of adding more Upgrade Slots specifies it can be applied more than once to a particular piece of gear, it can't. Stripping Equipment Stripping must reduce the capacity or utility of the Equipment in a significant way; if it looks like Stripping a piece of Equipment won't downgrade a game mechanical aspect of its function, you also don't gain an Upgrade Slot. Each element that is Stripped adds one Upgrade Slot to that piece of Equipment. Upgrade Slots can never be used to install enhancements to an area that has been Stripped: If you Strip the damage dice of of a Weapon, you can't use any of its Upgrade Slots to gain a modification that improves its damage. Stripping a piece of Equipment to add one Upgrade Slot takes eight hours of work, requires a DC 20 Mechanics check, and has a cost equal to 50% of the base cost of the item being Stripped. On a failed check the Stripping goes badly; the item ceases to work until fixed and it doesn't gain the additional Upgrade Slot. It takes 1 additional hour of work and the same cost before another DC 20 Mechanics check can be made to fix the problem. Once a successful check is made, the Equipment returns to functioning, and the Upgrade Slot is gained. Stripping Weapons You can Strip a Weapon in one of five ways: * Damage: Reduce the damage dice dealt by one step. The number of dice does not change, just their size. Change d12s to d10s, d10s to d8s, d8s to d6s, d6s to d4s, d4s to d3s, and d3s to d2s. For example, a Blaster Cannon Stripped of Damage deals only 3d10 damage rather than 3d12 damage. * Range: Reduce a Ranged Weapon's Range by one step. Change Heavy Weapon to Rifle, Rifle to Pistol, Pistol or Simple Weapon (Ranged) to Thrown Weapon, and Thrown Weapon to Melee Weapon. Melee Weapons can't have their Range Stripped. * Design: The standardized design of a Weapon can be Stripped, making it an Exotic Weapon. (Weapons already in the Exotic Weapon category can't use this option.) By moving things around extensively, more room for modifications are created at the cost of making the Weapon difficult to learn to use properly; for example, some gunfighters modify their Blaster Pistols so extensively that no one else can use them comfortably. * Stun Setting: A Weapon with a Stun Setting can have that function Stripped to gain one Upgrade Slot. * Autofire: Weapons with both a Single-Shot and Autofire setting can be Stripped to just having a Single-Shot fire mode. Stripping Armor Armor normally has one to three Upgrade Slots available as stock gear. It can add more by becoming thicker and bulkier (See Increasing Equipment Size, below) or by Stripping either of the two components described below: * Defensive Material: Armor can have sections of Defensive Material Stripped, lowering its Armor bonus to Reflex Defense and Equipment bonus to Fortitude Defense by 1 point (To a minimum of 0). * Joint Protection: Armor normally uses more fragile, more expensive materials to cover its joints, frequently with extensive bracing to transfer the impact of an attack to stronger sections of the Armor. Armor can be rebuilt to use standard, heavy materials everywhere and remove the bracing to make room for another Upgrade Slot. This doubles the weight and deceases the Maximum Dexterity bonus by 1 (Which can even reach negative numbers). Equipment Size The size of a piece of Equipment is determined slightly differently for General Equipment, Weapons, and Armor. * General Equipment: Unless otherwise noted, the size of a piece of General Equipment is determined by its listed weight (See below). If no size or weight is listed, treat it as Diminutive (About the same as a Blaster Pistol or Medpac) for purposes of the Equipment Upgrade Rules. * Weapons: Weapon size represents how bulky it is compared to other Weapons, so their listed sizes represent how big a character must be to use them in one hand. Weapons are the size of a creature two categories smaller. Thus a Blaster Pistol, a Small Weapon, is about the same size as a Diminutive creature. * Armor: Armor is the same size as the creature it is designed to protect. For example, Armor built for an Ewok is Small, but Stormtrooper Armor- always built for a Human- is Medium. Increasing Equipment Size Any piece of Equipment can gain an Upgrade Point by increasing its size by one step and doubling its cost. This has no effect on the Equipment's effectiveness. (For example, an enlarged Blaster Pistol has the same Range and damage despite now being a Medium-sized Weapon.) This represents both physically making more room within the Equipment for an Upgrade, and using sturdier, larger components to prevent the stress of the new modification from damaging the Equipment. If Armor undergoes this process, it doesn't change size but instead becomes one step heavier (Light Armor becomes Medium Armor, Medium Armor becomes Heavy Armor). Heavy Armor can't benefit from this option. No gear can gain more than one Upgrade Slot by increasing its size. Installing Upgrades Installing an Upgrade can take anywhere from a few minutes of work to a week of frustrating machining and retooling in an overheated workshop. The amount of time and Mechanics DC depends on the number of Upgrade Points required and the quality of the Upgrade (Commercially Bought or Scratch-Built). A Scratch-Built Upgrade costs twice as much as a Commercially Bought Upgrade. After the time listed in the table below, make a Mechanics check against the appropriate DC. On a success, the Upgrade is installed and functioning properly. On a failure, the Upgrade doesn't work properly; you may attempt the Mechanics check again, but each retry requires the same amount of time and costs half as much as the original attempt. Removing an Upgrade requires the same amount of time, but reduce the Mechanics DC by 5. On a failure, the Upgrade has been deactivated but not removed; you may attempt the Mechanics check again (Which requires the same amount of time). If you don't care about removing the Upgrade intact, reduce the time required to the next lowest increment (For example, from 1 day to 1 hour, or 1 hour to 10 minutes), but the Upgrade is automatically destroyed on a failed check. Once the Upgrade is successfully removed (Or destroyed), the Upgrade Slot that was occupied becomes available again. Restricted Upgrades Some modifications require licenses to perform or acquire, or are restricted to qualifying organizations or individuals. Equipment that already has a legal restriction uses uses the most restrictive of its own limitations or those of its Upgrades. A GM might decide multiple restricted Upgrades result in an item that is Military or Illegal even if the individual components have a lower restriction level. The four restrictions ratings are as follows: * Licensed: The owner must obtain a license to own or operate the object legally. Generally, the license is not expensive, and obtaining it has few if any additional legal requirements. * Restricted: Only specifically qualified individuals or organizations are technically allowed to own the object. However, the real obstacles to ownership are time and money; anyone with sufficient patience and cash can eventually acquire the necessary license. * Military: The object is sold primarily to legitimate police and military organizations. A Military rating is essentially the same as Restricted (See above), except that manufacturers and dealers are generally under tight government scrutiny and are therefore especially wary of selling to private individuals. * Illegal: The object is Illegal in all but specific, highly regulated circumstances. For more information on Restricted Items (And acquiring the licenses needed to carry them), consult the Equipment page. Universal Upgrades Universal Upgrades can be used on a wide range of gear. Most Universal Upgrades can be applied to any type of Equipment, though some have limitations or special rules when applied to Armor or Weapons. Weapon Upgrades The following Upgrades are designed specifically for Weapons. Some apply to any Weapon, while others apply only to specific Weapons (Detailed in the Upgrade description). A few, such as Neutronium Reinforcement, can be applied to non-weapon Equipment, but they rarely provide enough of a bonus to be worthwhile. Armor Upgrades Armor Upgrades are designed specifically for personal Armors. Popular with bounty hunters and infiltrators, they allow Armor to be more than a protective item. Many individual use their Armor as a walking collection of gadgets and gizmos to avoid detection, process data, or escape combat. Like most Equipment, all Armors have one free Upgrade Slot, but Powered Armor always has two free Upgrade Slots. This often makes these heavier, slower Armors appealing to mercenaries and hunters as mobile Equipment platforms, even if a lighter Armor might allow them to avoid more attacks.